Mobile Internet Protocol (Mobile IP or MIP) is an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) network layer protocol, specified in RFC-3344. It is designed to allow seamless connectivity session maintenance under TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) or other connection oriented transport protocols when a mobile node moves from one IP subnet to another. MIPv4 uses two network infrastructure entities, a Home Agent (HA) and an optional Foreign Agent (FA), to deliver packets to the mobile node when it has left its home network. MIPv4 also supports point-of-attachment Care-of Addresses (CoA) if a FA is unavailable. Mobile IP is increasingly being deployed for 2.5/3G (2.5 or third generation wireless) provider networks and may be deployed in medium and large Enterprise IEEE 802.11-based LANs (Local Area Networks) with multiple subnets.
MIPv4 relies on the use of permanently assigned “home” IP addresses to help maintain connectivity when a mobile device connects to a foreign network. On the other hand, IPsec-based (Internet Protocol Security, a security protocol from IETF) VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) use a tunneling scheme in which the outer source IP address is based on a CoA at the point-of-attachment and an inner source IP address assigned for the “home” domain. In general if either address is changed, such as when the mobile node switches IP subnets, then a new tunnel is negotiated with new keys and several round trip message exchanges. The renegotiation of the tunnel interferes with seamless mobility across wired and wireless IP networks spanning multiple IP subnets.